No ath­lete should ever have to go through this, says Kusal Per­era’s lawyer

BIPIN DANI OB­SERVER CORRESPONDENT MUM­BAI—Kusal Per­era’s UK-based lawyer Mike Mor­gan is very happy with the ICC’s re­cent find­ings that his client has been ex­on­er­ated from the dop­ing charges. The 25-yearold wicket-keeper bats­man has been cleared to re­sume his ca­reer by the world’s high­est gov­ern­ing body on late Wed­nes­day. “I am ex­tremely pleased for Kusal that this or­deal is over. He has han­dled the past few months with re­mark­able dig­nity and com­po­sure”, the lawyer, speak­ing ex­clu­sively over his mo­bile from London, said min­utes af­ter the ICC de­ci­sion. The law firm is also be­lieved to have had hired the ser­vices of med­i­cal ex­perts for its client. The pres­ence of the banned sub­stance (19No­ran­drostene­dione) was mys­te­ri­ously recorded in Per­era’s urine sam­ple

“We had noted the ex­tremely low amounts of the sub­stance re­port­edly de­tected in Kusal’s sam­ple and some other in­con­sis­ten­cies with the an­a­lyt­i­cal re­sults. As a re­sult of those in­con­sis­ten­cies and other in­ves­ti­ga­tions we had con­ducted, we came to sus­pect that Kusal’s sam­ple did not con­tain any pro­hib­ited sub­stance. We com­mu­ni­cated our con­cerns to the ICC and the rest is his­tory”, the lawyer added. Mike Mor­gan is also a cricket-fan. “As with all my clients, I will cer­tainly be fol­low­ing Kusal’s ca­reer from hereon in. I hope to see him back play­ing for Sri Lanka soon”, he added. So what les­son your client has learnt ? “Kusal did not do any­thing wrong. There is noth­ing for him to learn. If any­body has any­thing to learn from this, it is WADA and the WADA-ac­cred­ited lab­o­ra­to­ries. No ath­lete should ever have to go through this”, Mor­gan main­tained.

The au­thor­i­ties did not take proper pre­cau­tions in this case, be­lieves Dr. Dan­ish Za­heer, a drug ex­pert, who was hired by the Pak­istan Cricket Board (PCB) for the dop­ing charges against Shoaib Akhtar. Speak­ing ex­clu­sively from Pak­istan, he said, the re­sult man­age­ment com­mit­tee should have asked for 3 fol­low up sam­ples to con­firm if it was pro­duced by body or it was ex­oge­nous”.

“Also they should have asked the rel­e­vant test­ing au­thor­ity to con­duct thor­ough en­docri­nol­o­gist in­ves­ti­ga­tions to rule out any pathol­ogy”, Dr. Za­heer added. The news im­me­di­ately reached in Sri Lankan camp, now tour­ing Eng­land. “We are wait­ing to hear from the Board on Thurs­day”, the team’s me­dia man­ager, Chan­dr­is­han Per­era said from Eng­land. Back home in Sri Lanka, the pres­i­dent was awake at 1.30 to com­ment on the “good news”. “Na­tional se­lec­tors are free to pick him”, Thi­langa Su­math­ipala, speak­ing ex­clu­sively said from Colombo. “We are so happy and de­lighted. Hope no player will ever ex­pe­ri­ence such an un­fair sit­u­a­tion in any sport”, he added.

Su­math­ipala was the board chief when he had to fight against the au­thor­i­ties when um­pires Hair and Emer­son had ques­tioned Muthiah Mu­ralitha­ran’s bowl­ing ac­tion. Su­mathi was again in charge when his board backed in­no­cent Kusal.